Poem

Back in Condesa (rematch) Same hotel. Same room. Same bed. Last time, I cracked. Mushrooms. Midnight. Mirror. Screaming, swinging at myself. You coward. I won, but didn’t feel it. Braced for war at 4:07, searching for threats that weren’t there. You should be sleeping like a motherfucking tiger— full belly,

Retreat (fighting fragility) Muay Thai. Kickboxing. Jujitsu. All new. My partner is a hammer, I am the nail. Heat is a teacher. I—the melting pupil. Breath screaming, shirt soaked to skin. Who says yes to this? Then, I move him. Takedown. A violent reversal. A hard bed never so soft.

The Double Act (jab / cross) one-two. skip the fancy shit. clean. tight. true. in the ring— not to fight but to vanish. hit the bag? no. hit the voice: the planner, the pleaser, the worrier masquerading as warrior. the desire: feet that whisper. jab, a matchstrike. hips that coil.

Man, Becoming (Warsaw at 55) Before. I lit a candle. The flame didn’t speak. It witnessed. Tears came—not as weakness, but as breath I’d held for far too long. A quiet celebration. Now. Unbuckled past. I travel light— gloves, pens, a few good books, and a hunger for change. Not

The Purge (from a fevered prophet) It began with a virus. The voice cracked— then the illusions. Illness wasn’t a curse. It was interruption. A reset. Goals, amputated. Then the spores. A mirror. Staring into my site like it might confess. Saw my soul pop-up. Selling myself— my gift— cheaply.

Five Years (a cracked tongue of reinvention) Since Warsaw, I’ve played with heavy metal. Boxed in foreign gyms where emotion was the only instruction— and everyone heard me breathe. I left notes for ghosts. Folded fears like napkins, abandoned them in cafés— confessions I never wanted back. I slipped the

Uncollared (Genesis in Seven Blows) 1. The Naming They praised Pete. The quick study. Good boy. Peter came later, burning the name tag. Sovereign. Feral. 2. The Survival Years Pete asked for permission, bent for approval. He learned to shrink into sharp-cornered systems, smiling on cue. Fed him scraps and